Banana Yoshimoto is a worldwide phenomenon, with millions of fans falling in love with her novels and waiting eagerly for the next one—a circumstance referred to on the many web pages dedicated to her as "Banana-mania." Her rise to fame came quickly and early in her life. She was born Mahoko Yoshimoto in Tokyo in 1964. Her father, Takaaki Yoshimoto, was a famous literary critic, poet, and commentator; his works were extremely influential on Japan's radical youth movement in the 1960s. She majored in arts and literature at Nihon University in Tokyo, graduating in 1987. While there, she won the Izuini Kyoka Prize, which is Nihon's Department of Arts Award, for the novella Moonlight Shadow, which has been published in the same volume as Kitchen.

In 1987, Kitchen was awarded the prestigious Kaien Magazine New Writers' Prize. Upon the book's first publication in 1988, it was an instant...